Indonesia

05/27/2014

Bureau boss overseeing shipments has Benghazi connections

The State Department bureau tasked with secretly sending to embassies plastic and liquid explosives operates under the guidance of Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, whom a congressional panel last year separately found to be largely responsible for security lapses in Benghazi, WND has learned.

A series of WND articles recently exposed the purchase and international transport of many hundreds of pounds of plastic, sheet and linear explosives along with thousands of containers of high-energy liquid explosives.

Weeks after a State official laughed in response to WND’s inquiry, the department belatedly reacted to a follow-up request for information about how, where and by whom the blasting equipment will be used.

11/29/2013

Supporters of Barack Obama tout his dedication to the responsibilities of the presidency by noting that he had taken 96 days of vacation at the point in his term that President George W. Bush had taken a reported 335.

But they admit that 51 of Bush’s trips were to his Texas ranch, while records show that Obama’s destinations have ranged from exotic European and African locales to pricey digs to Hawaii, where he’s sometimes traveled separately from his family, effectively doubling transportation costs for taxpayers.

The records released are partial, meaning no firm travel-expense total can be assembled. But individual cases are revealing.

09/18/2012

With $83 million in Indonesian education projects, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is looking to hire a local citizen as an Education Specialist to assist in these initiatives.The local-hire only position, which requires prior teaching experience and/or a college degree, entails information dissemination responsiblities to promote USAID as well as to offer consultation to U.S. government employees, Indonesian officials, and NGO personnel involved in USAID education activities.

The program is separate from Phase II of another U.S.-funded endeavor known as the Program to Extend Scholarships
and Training to Achieve Sustainable Impacts, or PRESTASI II, which will enable
about 100 “emerging Indonesian leaders” to pursue advanced degrees and
other training (See: Foreigners Awarded Obama Scholarships; PatriotUpdate.com, Sept. 8, 2012).

09/08/2012

Indonesian citizens will continue to pursue masters and Ph.D.
programs courtesy of U.S. taxpayers—and even though students primarily
will study in U.S. universities, the Obama administration awarded a
contract to an Indonesian organization to coordinate this endeavor.

The second phase of what is known as the Program to Extend
Scholarships and Training to Achieve Sustainable Impacts, or PRESTASI
II, will enable about 100 “emerging Indonesian leaders” to pursue
advanced degrees and other training.

08/07/2012

The Obama Administration is providing twenty-eight jet engines to the Indonesian Air Force, which will use the remanufactured Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220E engines to equip its F-16 fighters.

The transfer of this technology is taking place under an Excess Defense Article, or EDA, arrangement, according to a Performance Work Statement that the U.S. Air Force posted to the FedBizOpps database on July 30.

According to the EDA page of the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency:

Working under authorities established in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act, defense articles declared as excess by the Military Departments can be offered to foreign governments or international organizations in support of U. S. national security and foreign policy objectives. Typically, EDA is transferred to support U. S. allies in their modernization efforts and to assist Latin American and Caribbean nations in their counter-narcotics programs.

Several contracts are expected to be awarded to bring this endeavor to fruition, the document said. In addition to remanufacturing and delivering the engines, separate awards will be made to contractors over a three-year period for logistics and technical support inside Indonesia.

02/27/2012

A program providing training and scholarships to Indonesian professionals is about to be expanded by the Obama Administration, which hopes to increase the “number of Indonesian future leaders holding advanced degrees (Masters) from U.S. and in-country institutions of higher education.”

According to a Statement of Work (SOW) posted today to the FedBizOpps database, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking contractors capable of carrying out Phase II of the “Program to Extend Scholarships and Training to Achieve Sustainable Impacts," or PRESTASI. (Solicitation #SOL-497-12-000004).

The selected vendor will continue to assist existing Phase I participants while identifying and placing new candidates for the extended program—which will cost an additional $16-$20 million.

It should be noted that this project represents but a fraction of overall U.S. assistance to Indonesia; on the other hand, this ongoing endeavor remains indicative of the massive “investments” of U.S. taxpayer funds into the education of Indonesia citizens that began under Bush and has continued with the current White House.

As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor reported nearly a year ago, the current administration agreed to pour an additional $90 million into public as well as Islamic schools via a project known as Prioritizing Reform, Innovation and Opportunities for Reaching Indonesia’s Teachers, Administrators, and Students, or PRIORITAS (Monitor, May 31, 2011). This followed an educational assistance program valued at about $167 million under Bush.

Similarly, PRESTASI is separate from yet another USAID/Indonesia unveiled just last month. In that instance, USAID's Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) program devoted yet another $20 million over the next five years "to support Indonesia’s efforts to develop world-class higher education institutions and prepare students to be successful leaders."

Percentage-wise, specific expenditures for PRESTASI Phase II will be broken down in the following manner, the document says:

Monitoring and Placement of Current Students in Program: 12%

Long Term Advanced Graduate degrees in the US: 68%

Short-term non-degree training opportunities: 10%

While the overarching goal of PRESTASI Phase II program is “to develop individuals and entities that are better equipped to provide leadership in the public and private sector," USAID wishes to equip those people and organizations so that they may return to their country to:

a. implement and support policies important to Indonesia’s development;

b. exercise equity, accountability and transparency in managing public and private sector resources;

c. provide better delivery of public services;

d. participate more effectively in and contribute more broadly to the country’s economic and social development;

It remains unclear how much USAID initially spent during Phase I; although a USAID FY 2011 “Service Contracts” spreadsheet lists a “subobligated amount” of $2.2 million for PRESTASI, a search of FedBizOpps produced zero results for the program, aside from Phase II SOW released and located today.

07/27/2011

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is looking for a contractor capable of developing a new analytical model to predict Internet usage and growth in thirty-two foreign nations, from "A" (Albania) to "Z" (Zimbabwe).

The ultimate goal is to estimate, using empirical data, the expansion of the number of unique individuals using the Internet on a weekly basis in these markets over the next five years. While various organizations have produced such estimates and prejections for sub-segments of the Internet market, such as mobile Internet use or fixed line broadband, BBG requires estimates of the growth of the entire Internet market, regardless of platform, including use via public access facilities.

Although the BBG attempted to justifiy why it wants a new predictive model, it did not specify why it needs -- nor what it intends to do -- with such a new mode of analysis. The agency said it would apply the model to Internet usage in the following nations: Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The BBG said the selected contractor should be able to complete the work within an eight-week period. It did not offer an estimated cost of the project.

05/31/2011

Insufficient public funding and substandard educational quality—-poorly qualified teachers, ineffective classroom methodologies, lack of education planning, teacher absenteeism, budgeting and management—all result in low completion rates after primary school and extremely low rankings against international testing standards, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics.

Having reached the above conclusion about one of the largest school systems in the world, the Obama Administration is infusing $90 million into a project to improve teacher performance and student outcomes in that particular system—the nationwide school network, that is, of Indonesia.

USAID is reaching out to private sector organizations capable of delivering “quality improvements” to teacher-training institutions and providers to bolster the effectiveness of those schools and, ultimately, the future economic prospects for its 41 million students.

U.S.-led improvements to that nation’s education system—in addition to providing assistance in the realms of climate change and regional security—are seen as “priorities for U.S.-Indonesian relations,” according to a recently released Request for Proposals (RFP) for the new project, known as Prioritizing Reform, Innovation and Opportunities for Reaching Indonesia’s Teachers, Administrators, and Students, or PRIORITAS.

Indonesia—the world’s most populous Muslim nation—in 1999 started to decentralize national control over education. The Bush Administration through USAID/Jakarta in 2003 began helping Indonesia to carry out those changes through aid programs such as Managing Basic Education (MBE), a four-year, $10 million project

By the following year the Administration had embarked upon a six-year, $157 million program—which it described as “one of the largest, if not the largest, USAID education program in the world”—to help Indonesia simultaneously decentralize and strengthen its archipelago-wide educational system of schools and madrasah.

“A decade ago a decentralized education system offered the promise of improved management, increased parental and stakeholder participation, strengthened accountability and improved quality of teaching and learning,” the RFP says.

“The structure of a modern decentralized system has been put in place, yet decentralization has failed to deliver on its promises.”

Therefore one of the goals of PRIORITAS is to make national authorities more aware of “school-based management and teacher training activities” begun under previous projects, thereby making officials more sensitive to the needs of district governments responsible for carrying out and paying for education.

PRIORITAS seeks to ensure that such “technical and management capacity exists at all levels of responsibility” within the Indonesian public and religious education ministries.

Despite its successful decentralization efforts, the Government of Indonesia continues to impose “school and teacher accreditation criteria” and minimum school-performance standards upon local and provincial governments.

“Unfortunately, district governments are ill prepared to manage the 147,537 government primary and junior secondary schools, let alone support Indonesia’s 39,000 MORA schools,” the RFP says.

Contractors selected for PRIORITAS will consult with MONE, MORA and USAID in choosing at least fifty new districts for the five-year project.

“At least 200 model schools shall be selected for the purposes of demonstrating best practices in teaching, learning and school management,” the project’s Statement of Work says.

“Schools selected should include non-religious public schools, public and private madrasah and any other parochial schools in the area that teaches the national curriculum."

The specific provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra, Banten, West Java, Central Java, East Java, South Sulawesi and Papua will receive “a full range of PRIORITAS technical assistance, training and support.”